Double Summon List – or, “How does this Normal Summon effect work?”

Hi folks. This is actually Redshift, not Dan, here to help you understand effects that let you Normal Summon more than once per turn. A few popular Decks like Evilswarm and Harpies use these effects, so it’s a good idea to know how they work.

Updated: 02/24/2018

The purpose of this post is to go over all the different ways you can have more than one Normal Summon or Set per turn, and how they interact with each other. Players like to ask “do my Tensus stack?”, or “can I stack Castor and Kerykeion?” If you are one of those players, read this.

So basically, by looking at rulings, we can sort these effects into three groups with a common set of rules.

Group 1
Double Summon
Chain Summoning

All these 2 cards do is raise the normal limit on how many Normal Summons/Sets you are allowed to make in a turn. It’s like how monsters can usually attack only once per Battle Phase, but monsters like Cyber Twin Dragon can attack twice normally. They both set the limit to a fixed number. If you play Double Summon, that number is 2. If you play Chain Summoning, that number is 3. This means that if you play 2 copies of Double Summon, you can still only perform 2 Normal Summons/Sets per turn. If you play Double Summon and Chain Summoning in the same turn, you get 3 Summons (the bigger number of the two), not 5. Long story short, these will stack with the latter two groups, but not with each other.

That’s quite a list, isn’t it? These effects give you 1 additional Normal Summon (or Set) between all of them. That means they don’t stack with each other. However, they do stack with Group 1. So, if you activate Double Summon and the effect of Swap Frog, you can Normal Summon/Set twice normally, and also Normal Summon a “Frog” monster. You also aren’t forced to perform these in any certain order. For example, you can play Fire Formation – Tensu at the start of your turn, and use the additional Normal Summon granted by it to Normal Summon something like Brotherhood of the Fire Fist – Bear. Then, even if Tensu isn’t on the field anymore (Bear may or may not be to blame here), you still have your regular Summon.

Last but not least. These effects can almost be regarded as Special Summons that just count as Normal Summons. By that I mean you can do them as often as you are able to without regard to the usual limits. You can stack them with each other, and the other groups. You can spam nine Gadgets in a turn with the late Ultimate Offering or all the HUNDERS in your hand at once. However, with Sombre, Kerykeion, and Dancer, this is mostly theoretical because each state that their effects can only be used once per turn (between every copy).

Also, these, unlike the other effects, perform a Normal Summon when the effect resolves as well. You can’t activate the effect and then decide to Summon at some random point later in your turn.